In an interview with Troye Sivan for Paper Magazine, the 25-year-old singer said that as much as she has an appreciation for her past work, it was also a means to an end: She used hits like "Into You" and "Problem" to build her platform so that she could make the music she really wanted to be making.

"I feel like Dangerous Woman was a grown-up My Everything, and [Sweetener] is a grown-up Yours Truly. And with all due respect to My Everything and Dangerous Woman, I feel like I played the game a lot on those two albums," she explained. "I wanted to make dope records that would put me in a place where I could then make whatever the f--k I wanted. I kind of played the game a little bit. All my favorite songs from those two albums are not the singles, like they aren't at all."